1. Technical Field of the Invention
The invention relates to remotely controlled, moving platforms. In particular, the invention relates to a remotely controlled, transport platform for use as an aid in transporting equipment and devices of bomb disposal squads for purposes of rendering explosives harmless.
2. Prior Background Art
Military and police bomb disposal squads make use of robotic manipulating devices, cameras and disposal equipment. Transport platforms for such devices are currently limited to travel on hard surfaces. A transport platform, highly maneuverable in all terrain situations, having a low center of gravity, would prove useful to bomb disposal squads. Satisfying the need for such a device is one of the intended uses for which the invention was derived.
Wars come and go as do the opposing armies and fighting factions. Yet, when wars and fighters are gone, death and destruction and the potential for further death and destruction remain on the pathways and the fields once trod by the opposing forces.
The reason death and destruction continue to lurk and to strike long after hostilities have ceased stems from the propensity of armed forces to seed explosive mines in the ground in places most likely to result in their being triggered by either pedestrian or vehicular traffic. Pathways through forests and wooded areas, open and cultivated fields; pathways through mountains from village to village, become the sites of sudden death and dismemberment. Population movement becomes stagnant. People are afraid to travel from one village to another. Whole populations are subjected to starving because the fields where they would normally grow their food now consume lives, or cripple those who enter.
There is little incentive for investment in programs aimed at removing mines in regions formerly subjected to hostilities. Mine detection devices are expensive. The work of mine removal is dangerous. Many mines, having plastic and wooden cases, are undetectable by conventional mine sensing equipment.
It is further intended that the instant invention be employed to move a mine exploding mechanism through areas containing anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. It is also intended that the mechanism transported by the invention will explode anti-personnel mines and leave the heavier, more difficult to trip, anti-tank mines to be weeded out by more conventional methods.